Through all of these years
by A-Karana
Summary: A walk in the cold and a look back on a fulfilled life
1. Chapter 1

So, something new from me. Something different. This is not another sequel and this is not something I have done before... hope you like it!

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**Chapter 1**

_**I'm so tired of being here**_

_**Suppressed by all my childish fears **_

It is such a cold day that I can see my breath coming out in white puffs. I have the feeling that I can even feel those puffs against my skin while I walk forward, walk through them. It feels like my own breath is tickling my cheeks and I blink from time to time when they reach my eyes.

It is getting dark already and the heaven is not black yet, but it's getting there. Where the sun is setting it has a red colour and the leaf-less trees give the whole scenario a surrealistic touch. Walking through a colourful comic must feel this way, if the characters in comics can feel anything.

Slowly I put one foot in front of the other, leaning on my cane. I hear it make a clicking sound every time it touches the pavement. Tock, it makes and then I hear the slurring sound of my own, limping, steps.

The hand on the cane is cold and my fingers are aching from gripping it all the time. My right hip is hurting as well, for years now, because the artificial hip-joint they had to give me a while back is too old now and needs to be exchanged. But for what?

I have to pause after a few steps to catch my breath, even though I am walking as fast as a turtle. Maybe even a snail, I don't know, never raced against them.

While I am leaning on my cane, I look up from my ducked position and realize that I am standing in front of the house I grew up in. God, that was a long time ago.

The facade of the house is still held in the same white and the brown windows are also still there, which are slightly askew, because my father built the house himself. Build a house, plant a tree, father a son, three things a man should do before he is allowed to die.

I planted a tree, I fathered a son, but I never built a house, at least not entirely. Fixing some things here and there yes, but that's it. Maybe that's why I am still alive? I don't know, but I fathered two sons that should equiponderate the house.

The house has a new roof I realize while I blink against the red of the sky, which blinds me.

The black shingles are gone and have been replaced by blue ones. Everything changes with time and I am grateful that our house never needed a new roof, because Lorelai loves the blue tiles, I'm sure.

On the right side, over the roof over the porch, there is the window to Liz old room, the window to my old room on the left side of it.

Somehow there must be abrasion tracks on the window frame, because she climbed out of it so many times, but it's not visible from down here and certainly not with my bad eye- sight.

I remember that my room had blue walls. I think my parents painted them blue before my birth and they stayed blue until I moved out after my father's death.

I remember that my parents spruced my room when I was seven or eight, but they used the same blue again.

A few months later my mother was dead and the little shell we had lived in was shattered.

I slowly start walking again and put one foot in front of the other.

None of us had thought about death, because she hadn't been sick. Later I asked my father if they had known anything about her illness, but he said that they didn't have a clue. He woke up in the morning and she was lying beside him, dead. Still today, eighty years later I still can remember it.

The black car that came to take her body away I can remember, I think I will never forget the license number. It is burned in my brain.

I started my third school year without my mother and the cookies she had been baking the two years before I had missed the most. The comforting scent of them when you came home after the first horrible day of school, it had been gone.

After my mothers death I spent a lot of time in my father's hardware store, played with the screwdrivers, because he wouldn't allow me to bring my toy cars into the store. This is a business and not a playground, he always said and I can still hear his deep rumbling voice.

-This is family, you care for family-, was another one of his sayings. -If you ever act like a jerk I will kick your ass-, another.

I can't really say what molted me more: The first few years with my mother, or the next few with my father. Maybe the many years without them.

I can remember a lot of things my father said to me, but none of my mother. I wasn't that young then, so maybe I should remember. But the most useful thing that she told me that I can remember is – Change your underwear, Lucas- that's it.

Oh, that's actually something I remember about her, she always called me Lucas. I don't know why. I never asked her and I forgot to ask my father about it, although that wouldn't have been very wise. I think his answer would have been "Because that's your name, Luke".

My father was a very down to earth guy, as Lorelai would say, one that thought always rational and was more self-reliable than was good for him.

I think I got that from him, but I learned to let it go a bit over the years and rely on my wife.

I don't know if my father ever relied on my mother, maybe their marriage wasn't as good as we kids always thought. Maybe he just changed after my mother died that night.

I can't even imagine what shock it must be if you go to bed at night with your wife next to you and wake up the next morning and find her dead body because of an aneurism.

I think I wouldn't have been able to call the ambulance or the police, but he was. So maybe he really was that practical.

I don't doubt that he loved her, he never married again, although that could have been for the amount of work and the short span of time he had. Was my father dating?

Strange what kinds of thoughts are coming to my mind nearly seventy years after his death.

Oh, there it is, the Diner. It's nice to know that it is still up and running, my staff is doing a fantastic job. My kids call me crazy because I am refusing to sell it, but I guess that will be something they have to do after I'm gone. But I'm old, I have a right to be eccentric, I mean it's not like I am still serving the costumers.

Now Fred has seen me and he waves, I guess I have to wave back. God, my hand hurts.

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

**I am very very curious what you think of this story, soplease leave a review and tell me!

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****Chapter 2**

_**And if you have to leave I wish that you would just leave**_

'_**Cause your presence still lingers here and it won't leave me alone**_

****

As I lower my hand back to my cane and grip it tightly, the stool at the counter catches my eyes and I stare at it, like I've never seen it before.

It's her stool, always was, always is and always will be, since the day she burst into my diner that day so many years ago.

I remember that day so clearly. It was a very busy day, the place was packed, but somehow everything was in its place. I was running around like a mad man serving my customers, but everything seemed structured some how. Until she burst in and like a tornado. She whirled everything around so it seemed, everything seemed hectic, chaotic, strangely blurry when she stepped in.

I sensed that something had changed, the atmosphere in the room was different, but at first I had no idea what it was until I faced the eye of the tornado. There everything was calm and silent, everything else seemed to disappear, all the chaos vanished as I got sucked deeper and deeper into the eye.

In my case there was not one eye, but two. The two most breathtaking and astounding blue eyes I had ever seen and I came face to face with Lorelai Gilmore for the first time.

The silence didn't stay for long and her incessant chatter started, she followed me through the diner like a puppy and begged for coffee.

Everybody, who's ever met us, knows that she got what she wanted.

While she begged and waited, she didn't let herself get scared or intimidated by me, she handed me a small piece of a newspaper, on which she had written this unimportant sentence.-You will meet an annoying woman today. Give her coffee and she'll go away- I didn't want her to go, maybe that's why I tried so often to get her "off" coffee.

While I'm commemorating those things my gaze wanders away from the stool and back to me, it stays at my left pocket where my wallet is.

I'm still carrying that piece of paper around with me. Sixty years later.

She told me to put it in my wallet and carry it around with me, because it would bring me luck.

Of course she was right, it did bring me luck.

My fingers reddened from the cold and I am starting to feel cold, while the wind blows into my face.

The reddish glow of the sky is nearly gone and the darkness of the night is expanding.

I don't know for how long I zoned out and stared at the stool.

I have to hurry, otherwise I won't be able to see a thing when I arrive. Hurry has had a bitter taste for some time now, because I just can't walk fast. I think I am the one who is annoyed the most by this damn cane.

-You're still sexy- Lorelai always says when I am lamenting about my age and her eyes are twinkling and I know that she is mocking me, but saying the truth at the same time, at least her truth.

For me she still is the most beautiful woman in the world. We both have more wrinkles, we can't walk as fast as before and our eyes are not as good anymore, but for me she is still as beautiful as she was that day in the diner when she turned my life upside down for the first time.

I carry forward with my way and the tick tack of the cane followed by my scuffing steps is audible, sounds so loud in the otherwise silent winter-night.

What induced her to fall in love with me, I will never understand, me the man with the coffee. Maybe it was just her craziness.

But the better I know why I love her. If I say "everything" it wouldn't do it any justice, wouldn't do her any justice, but to name everything… I think another ninety years of life wouldn't suffice.

When I saw her face back then with the help of the crazy cassette, I knew I had to make a move, otherwise my chance would be gone-again.

We had been friends for so long and the thought of jeopardizing this friendship scared me out of my mind, but eight years of suppressed feelings were enough- even for me.

The first kiss, the first date, the first night together- I am at a loss for words still.

I can smell her perfume and butterflies are flattering around in my stomach. Old idiot.

Here I am, limping and with a few grey hairs and fantasising about my wife.

Yes, my wife. I managed to marry her. Eventually.

Our way wasn't easy. It was rocky, small, painful and bumpy, with more than one rock on the way, but together we managed to get all of this out of the way.

Two break-ups, months without contact, one daughter and a Christopher later we got married.

Lately I am watching the wedding video just as often as she did over the years. I stare at the screen watching her when she strides through the garden of the Inn in her tight, white dress, beaming at me and forgetting everything around her. In this moment there was only us.

The ceremony flew past me, just like the years that followed. Our secret made it more intimate for the both of us. Just for the both of us, nobody else.

We knew that she was pregnant, had found out just a few weeks before. It hadn't been the reason though why we got married. Her pregnancy was just a bonus and made our stupid, carved smiles even wider.

The honeymoon we spent in Hawaii, her wish of course. I wouldn't have cared if we had spent the whole trip in a tent, as long as we would have been alone.

At the moment I would prefer Hawaii though, because the wind is getting stronger, the night is getting colder and the way that lies still in front of me seems endless.

**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you so much for the reviews!

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****Chapter 3**

_**These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real**_

_**There's just too much that time can not erase**_

****

I am creeping ahead, always following the road. A car nears and then drives past me. I turn my head slowly.

The red backlights are nearly to crude in this nearly colorless winter-dawn, but I realize nonetheless that it's a Jaguar. You don't see such cars often in Stars Hollow, at least not since Richard and Emily Gilmore had died.

The weather had been similar when the phone had rung and a hysterical Emily had told us that her husband was dead.

The one time she hadn't been able to keep the composure, for they hadn't made plans how to tell Lorelai her father was dead, after Richards's first heart attack.

A settlement was made for what to do when your partner dies, which you can execute strategically, that was something only those two could come up with.

How much they had been affected by this topic had showed in the fact that they had forgotten to plan how Emily should tell Lorelai,

Maybe they would have sent a card other wise, or even a fax would have been a possibility otherwise, you could never know with what they would do.

I guess you had to come from their world and live in their world to understand them.

Lorelai never understood them and neither have I. Sometimes I felt like I had been beamed into an alternate universe like on the Enterprise and they were speaking marsian.

It had been like this right from our first meeting on and never changed.

Everything they did seemed strange to me and I never understood how they operated.

In the beginning they had tried to get to know me in their very special way. Emily invited me to dinner and Richard took me out to play golf with him.

During this time they had been separated and acted like loons. So much that Lorelai was laughing about it on the outside, while on the inside she really wanted them to get back together, which in the end, they did.

Richard without Emily or Emily without Richard, not possible. They fitted together, needed each other, loved each other. Like Lorelai and me, but different.

Their relationship with Lorelai relaxed with time and as often as they fought, tried to tell us what to do or criticized Lorelai I am convinced, that both, beside each other, loved one person the most: Their only daughter.

This was the thing that connected us and brought us together time and time again: Our incapacity to be without Lorelai.

Lorelai's facial expression after Emily had told her that her father was dead can only be described with one word: Shock.

As Emily was trying to keep her composure, Lorelai clung to me and cried uncontrollably.

Her fingers dug through my shirt in my back while I held her and tried to help her get over a thing I had never done myself: the loss of a father.

Together we told the kids and then drove to the Gilmore Mansion which was now only Emily's.

In the driveway stood a Jaguar, just like the one that passed me while I am dragging myself through town.

I think we couldn't have been prepared for what followed.

At first, when we arrived at the house Emily was angry. Furious even. She had thrown all of Richards's things into the pool and we were still drying clothes, papers and photos weeks later.

The desperate Emily had made place for a fury, who blustered through the house and intended to turn everything into debris and ashes. If it wouldn't have been so sad and desperate Lorelai and I would have laughed.

With several Scotch's, two cigarettes and a lot of cajoling Lorelai finally succeeded to get Emily to sit down.

For hours she sat with the empty glass in the living room and starred into space, while Lorelai sat beside her in silence and didn't have the heart to take her mother's hand. Who could have predicted the consequences?

So she held mine even tighter while we sat hour after hour in the desolated living-room, which still looked a bit like the castle of Louis XIV.

Sometime Emily said the last words, that sounded like words of Emily Gilmore. – He promised me I could go first- she said into the silent room and Lorelai and I looked at each other in astonishment, unsure if she had really said that.

I nodded at her when I realized that this was just another thing only the Gilmore's could come up with. An arrangement who would die first.

I am shaking my head while I am remembering this scene and burst out laughing. Rory should write a book about those two and even then nobody would believe you.

But then I remember what followed.

With a ship you would call it a nemesis, with a house you would speak of a slow dereliction, but when you are talking about a human being? I have to ask Lorelai about a word for it, she knows it for sure and if not she will make something up.

But that is exactly what happened. Emily decayed in front of all our eyes very slowly and more painful than any of us could have imagined.

She didn't plan anymore, she didn't argue anymore, she didn't criticize anymore and she didn't go out anymore.

A broken woman, I think that describes it best.

And while Lorelai worried how the kids would take it, I worried about my wife, because no-one knew better than me how much Lorelai loved her parents.

Now her father was dead and her mother shattered into so many pieces, that even Lorelai wasn't able to put them back together.

Sometimes when the kids and Lorelai were around her you could still get a glimpse of the old Emily Gilmore, but just for a second before it vanished again.

In the end she declined more and more, got forgetful, absent-minded, weak. Lorelai had just started to argue if we should move her in with us, hire a nurse for her at home or bring her to a nursing home, when she just fell asleep, and died.

One had sensed that she didn't want to live anymore, not for her grandchildren and not for Lorelai.

If Richard's death had made Lorelai incredibly sad, Emily's death devastated her.

Two days before her death Emily had basked in memories again and had told Lorelai casually how proud Richard and her had always been about her and how much they loved her.

Lorelai had cried that night and had posed the question how it was possible that her mother had to lose her husband and get dementia that she told her for the first time how she felt about her.

It might have been the cynicism of this relationship that those two loved each other so much but had argued their whole life.

Rory had come to this funeral from some place on the earth. After her break from Yale she had always worked towards her goal to become a journalist and had succeeded.

She was one of those business-women about whom you ask yourself why they're not married, 'cause they're nice.

The men in Rory's life came and went, she doesn't have kids.

The last one she met with a bit over forty stayed and they are still living together.

They're not married.

Why? I don't know, Lorelai doesn't know.

Maybe neither of them posed the question because they are happy as it is?

Jordan is a nice guy and if he ever hurts her I might not kick his butt, because I'm not able to get my leg that high anymore, but for some flourish with the cane it would still suffice. After all he isn't the youngest anymore either.

She was together with Logan for quite a while, after that she had a boyfriend from Spain, but he didn't want kids. Then came a doctor from Chicago and an engineer from Germany until she finally met Jordan, who is a journalist also.

He understood her urge to travel and to write about politics, because that's what she did. She worked as a political journalist for the New York Times.

Lorelai told me once that they tried to get pregnant for a while when Rory was over forty already.

But the luck that Lorelai and I were granted they hadn't.

I think you can't have everything in life. Lorelai got pregnant at sixteen and sacrificed so many things for Rory's sake, that it wouldn't have been fair if she would have to spend her life alone after Rory moved out.

Rory never lacked anything and Lorelai made sure of that and so god, fate, foreordination or coincidence, or how ever you want to call it, denied her for the first time something: Her own kid.

But Rory wouldn't be Rory if she would become desperate because of this and she and Jordan are still making the craziest trips all around the world.

Yesterday they came back from Greenland. From this fact alone you know that she really is her mother's daughter. A trip to Greenland in winter, they are one sandwich short off a picnic!

I reach into my pocket and take out a handkerchief, lay it in between my hand and the cane, for the callus which I have on my hand from this damn thing are hurting.

But what don't you all take on?

**TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

_**When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears**_

_**When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears**_

_**And I held your hand through all of these years, but you still have all of me**_

The last reddish glimmer has now vanished from the sky and I stretch a bit to see if my destination is already visible, because left and right everything is dark.

I walk past a house and its entry is decorated with balloons and a poster saying "Welcome home baby".

I am smiling again and remember the moment when a similar poster had been over our door when we could finally bring the twins home, after months in the hospital.

My stomach is still in knots just thinking about this pregnancy.

We had been so happy when Lorelai found out that she was pregnant. We had worked hard for it, if you want to put it that way, since we had been back together. After endless minutes of waiting the strip had turned pink and we had hugged each other hard. If we would have known what had been ahead of us, we probably would have barely smiled,

Immediately after the honeymoon the problems had started and Lorelai had only been in her second month.

She was sick constantly and not only in the morning, but thw whole day. She couldn't eat anything without throwing up afterwards. We both felt that this wasn't normal, but the doctor told us that it was no big deal and that she would give her some medicine if it would get worse and everything would be over. However she was wrong. A Sunday morning Lorelai couldn't get out of the bathroom anymore and I brought her to the emergency room where they finally helped her.

Yet the problems weren't over. In her third month they told us that we would have twins and I would be lying if I say that we were jumping for joy. We starred at each other and didn't know what to say. We needed some time to get used to the thought of having two babies at once.

Finally, after Lorelai remembered her crazy dream from years before that. We could be really happy and were looking forward to it. This wasn't a bad thing after all.

The happiness lasted two months and then Lorelai started to get sick again. She was throwing up, got dizzy and she had a constant headache.

I am looking down on the back of my hand and I can see that my hairs are standing and I probably have goose-bumps all over my body.

It took me over two weeks to convince her to go and see another doctor. I remember that he took blood, measured her blood-pressure and then called an ambulance to ger her to the next hospital.

She had developed a form of pre-eclampsia and that wasn't only dangerous for the babies but also for her.

They gave her some medicine and put her on bed-rest and she really followed their orders.

She was so unhappy and desperate back then and she was crying a lot. Partly because of the hormones but also because of the sheer fear of losing the babies. You could see the fear in her eyes all the time and I was barely able to work anymore, scared that something would happen to her while I was gone.

We were driving each other crazy with our fear and argues a lot what didn't help her blood-pressure.

What made it worse was that she didn't get better. Die medicine didn't help the way it should, she was sick and became depressive from lying on bed all day long. She didn't accept any help though and even send Sookie and Rory away, yelled at me and cried herself to sleep.

Back then I though this could be the end to a very short marriage, but at the same time I knew that we couldn't be without each other.

My offer to move out for a little while so she wouldn't get as upset anymore backfired badly and she became hysterical.

I don't remember what I told her or what she said, because we never talked about that incident ever again, but I remember that I carried her into the bathroom, sat her in the tub and switched on the cold water. I didn't know what else to do.

I yelled at her that I was as scared and worried as she was and probably even more because I could not only lose my kids but also my wife.

It helped somehow and I was able to calm her down and soothe her afterwards.

At the time she was in her seventh month and just a few days later I found her unconscious on our bed.

The pre-eclampsia had turned into eclampsia and they had to perform a caesarean immediately to save the kids and her. After they delivered the babies Lorelai was still fighting for her life, because her liver had been already damaged.

Anthony and Layna were born 22nd May 2008, three months before the due-date.

Lorelai was finally able to meet them three days after the delivery, because she had been in intensive- care before. They were so tiny and I was scared at first to touch them.

I stop and catch my breath, the picture of those small human beings burned forever in my brain.

Even back then, when they had the size of my hand, you could already tell what different characters they had.

Anthony has always been a calm and canny but ailing boy and that never changed. He eats healthy, makes sport and is out in the fresh air as often as possible but he was always the first one to catch whatever virus was in the air.

He had needed artificial ventilation for a long time and refused to eat. And for a while we thought he would have a damaged retina.

Layna was so different already back then. She was the carbon copy of her mother and even inherited her scary healthiness and her iron stomach. She was released quickly from intensive care, kept crying and wailing the whole day and whenever Lorelai nursed her she drank greedily until she feel in an exhausted sleep.

Altogether they stayed nearly three months at the hospital, just as long until they reached the normal due date.

Lorelai had to stay as well and still needed medication and during that time I felt really lonely in that huge, new house.

My thoughts still lingering at the medication I start walking again, because at one point the old man that is me wants to arrive.

The day we were finally allowed to take them home with us was something like a religious experience and we were treating them like raw eggs for a long time. Our whole life was revolving around them and we refused to let them out of our sight for just a second. Lorelai and me even considered that one of us would quit his job and stay at home, but in the end we decided against that.

It was less a financial decision and more because we had both worked or whole life and couldn't not work anymore all of a sudden.

In hindsight that was a good decision, although we often doubted it, when we hurried back and forth with the stroller and all the baby stuff between the Inn and the diner.

When they turned three and started pre-school we slowly started to relax. We didn't freak out anymore when they hit their heads and we didn't run to the emergency room anymore when one of them had a cold.

We even started going out again and Lorelai dragged me to the movies or we took a weekend off, just the two of us. The kids stayed with Rory or April who nearly started fighting over who could watch them.

The next shock came though when Lorelai got pregnant again three and a half years after the twins birth. She was on the pill and we will never know how she could get pregnant, beside the obvious reasons, bit it happened and we were really shocked.

After the complicated pregnancy and birth of the twins we had decided against more kids, because we weren't willing to take the risk another time.

We both thought about it and had a long discussion and finally both decided that we didn't want an abortion.

Another decision we never regretted.

Although Lorelai was 44 years old by that time this pregnancy was without any complications and was the most incredible thing we ever experienced.

She went through all pregnancy stereotypes you can imagine: She had morning sickness, she ate the strangest things and had the most disgusting cravings, she was all hormonal and I have to say I enjoyed parts of that.

Anthony and Layna painted her belly with colours and they loved it to feel the baby move inside of her.

Like the pregnancy the birth was just as smooth. Lorelai's water broke in the diner, although I had told her to avoid that and we hurried to the hospital. After hours of cursing, yelling and crushing my hand Joshua was born and was started crying furiously the second he was out.

This time I wasn't crying out of fear, but out of joy.

Even now while I make my way through the town, panting and wheezing, my eyes are tearing up when I think about the moment this little person leaving her body, screaming furiously and then looking at us with his big blue eyes when he was lying contently on his mother's chest and didn't have a clue that he was our little miracle.

**TBC**


	5. Chapter 5

Wow, I can't believe I am able to pdate this again. I bet no one remembers this story, but I am going to post this anyway. I hate unfinished stories and I want this to be finished at one point or the other as well.

Updating was only possible though because of one and only **Steph **who betaed this for me and knows now that I will never be able to forget the word "apprentice" ever again. Don't ask why, it's a long and horrible story, including a dictionary, some german words and only one translation option.

I hope you like this chapter, I hope you will review (thank you all for the encouraging reviews!) and because I am updating I want to point out that some other nice authors have organized a **GG Fanfiction chat-a-thon. **There are a lot of great FF authors who are willing to answer all your questions concerning their stories, the writing... So if you have something you always wanted to ask, go to the chat-a-thon.

If you need more infos, and I am sure you will, go to my authirs profile and et the link to the homepage.Tell them what author you always wanted to question. It's a great idea, it's for a good cause and where else can you see Mag68 beg?! Go there and check it out!

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**Chapter 5**

_**You used to captivate me by your resonating light**_  
_**Now I am bound by the life you left behind**_

I am standing in front of the entry way now and stare at the door and the gravel walk at whose end the brick building is standing.

When the kids were still small we used to come here with them.

I can still see Toni when he was just about a year old toddling along the way and falling on his butt. Of course he started screaming bloody murder right away, while Layna ran ahead and always stood back up whenever she fell.

It is strange how two people can bring three so completely different kids into the world; or five, actually. You can't say that Rory got a lot from Chris or that April has much of Anna. By now I am somehow convinced that kids don't get much from their parents, besides their looks.

I remember that Rory quoted an author when she spoke at the funeral for Lane and Zach's youngest son, who died shortly after his birth. I can't remember the name of the man, but I still remember what she said:

_Your children are not your children._

_They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself._

_They come through you but not from you,_

_And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you._

_You may give them your love but not your thoughts._

_For they have their own thoughts._

_You may house their bodies but not their souls,_

_For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, _

_Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams._

Oh no, I couldn't just memorize it right away. Me, Luke Danes and famous quotes? Lorelai used to quote it a lot after the kids had moved out.

After Josh had moved out, something happened which we had never expected and with which we couldn't deal with at first. The house got silent and we were suddenly alone and didn't know what to do.

We missed our kids and sometimes I caught myself red handed calling one of the five and asking them how they were doing. I always told them that Lorelai wanted me to call, so that they wouldn't know how much I missed them.

When Rory had moved out and Lorelai had still been alone, she had coped with the loneliness her own way. She had invited me, for example, to a movie night, because I had such knowledge about movies. She just didn't want to be alone.

April never really lived with us and when she moved out at Anna's we finally saw her more often, because she went to Yale as well. It's a lot easier to drive an hour to Yale than it is to fly to New Mexico. Very much to Anna's chagrin, April spent a lot of time with us during her college years and played with her brothers and her sister or chatted with Lorelai and me.

We were always happy when she stopped by spontaneously.

After she finished her studies, she moved to Japan, which was very hard on us because we barely saw her back then. But it helped her a lot and she was able to spend day and night in a laboratory. I will never be able to understand how I got a scientifically talented daughter.

After she came back, she started to work for a company in Silicon Valley. I never really got what exactly she is doing there, but she likes her job and I think that is the most important thing.

Her husband Fred does something similar and my granddaughter Athena, named after the goddess not the heir, inherited her parents love for science. Maybe it's just interesting to her, to stick with my former theory.

Anthony has always been, well, Anthony. He was never really good at school and never interested in any subject, except art.

Lorelai and I once tried to find someone in our family who was a talented artist, but we couldn't think of anyone. Looks like Anthony is the first.

When he was still a kid, he used to sit in his room and draw for hours while his sister and his brother were playing outside.

If you wanted to punish him, grounding him or taking his allowance away didn't help at all. You had to take his pens- that was the worst thing for him.  
Shortly before Richard died, he and Emily suggested that Anthony should go to a special art boarding- school, but Anthony didn't want to go.

One could think that he was a mama's boy, but he wasn't. It was me he followed like a shadow, sat beside me in the diner and watched me work while he was drawing, and it was me he came to when he was sad and wanted to be soothed.

For Layna though, like for Rory, the sun rose and set over Lorelai. She wasn't only her little clone but she was imitating her in everything she did.

She was two when she had already learned all of Lorelai's quips and used them in every possible and impossible situation. She even used the obligatory "dirty", although she didn't really understand what it meant.

She was a lot calmer than Lorelai though, so I still have hope that she might be my daughter as well. She didn't crawl out the windows as a teenager, she didn't drink and she finished her schooling without getting pregnant.  
What Tony and Layna had spared us, Josh completely made up for. It was because of him that Lorelai and I got a whole new appreciation for Richard and Emily.

He bolted the very first day of school. Suddenly he was standing in the middle of the diner and told me that he had decided school was not for him and he didn't want to go there anymore.

I hadn't been a big fan of school myself but I went there at least, and it was only because I was scared of my father.

But not Josh.

Like a duck takes to water he ditched school, which didn't go unnoticed in Stars Hollow. The calls of Patty, Babette or Taylor that they had found him somewhere in town while he should be in school became routine. We would go pick him up, punish him, take him back to school, and a few days later the whole procedure would start all over.

Once I told Lorelai that he reminded me a lot of Jess, but she didn't want to hear that, because she and Jess never learned to get along.

Josh wasn't stupid and his grades were good, but he still didn't want to go to school.

Unlike his siblings, Toni studied art and Layna economics, he didn't think about going to College when he graduated from High School.

Lorelai tried to talk him into it, but finally he admitted that he had already talked with Tom and that he wanted to be a carpenter.

Back then I was actually relieved that Emily and Richard had already passed away, because I think that decision alone would have killed them. We accepted his decision, and after he had finished his apprenticeship, he studied architecture. Today he runs the only architecture company that ever existed in Stars Hollow.

Toni started to work for a publishing house and he is still working there today. He is illustrating kid's books and it is always funny when he and Rory meet and talk about books, because they talk about the same subject but never get what the other is really talking about.

It's the happiest time for us when all our kids visit with their families.

Rory and Jordan. April, Fred and Athena. Toni and Lisa with Caleb. Layna and Adam with Lorelai and William as well as Josh with his wife Clara and his daughters Catherine and Julia and son Lucas. I can't even begin to tell you how long I tried to talk them out of the name Lucas, but as always he wouldn't listen!

With Layna and her daughter it was different. Because Rory never had kids. I think Lorelai brainwashed Layna into continuing the tradition as soon as she knew she was expecting a girl. Lorelai never admitted it, but I know her.

I am happy that all five got what they wanted in life. Layna is happy that she is running the Dragonfly together with Martha now.

I am still standing in front of the entrance and slowly step one foot in front of the other. I am freezing. I should really go in.

**TBC**


	6. Chapter 6

Firsth: thank you for your reviews. I really appreciate them! I will update wth two chapters today, so you will have something to accuse me on Saturday when it is my turn at the** GG Fanfiction chat-a-thon.** You can find the link ito further informations in my profile and I hope to see you there.

Thanks to **Grizzly** for betaing the chapters!

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**Chapter 6**

**_Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams_**  
**_Your voice has chased away all the sanity in me_**

The gravel crunched under my feet and the cane. With every step an additional crunch is audible when the wood meets the small stones.

Left and right the way is bordered with grass that looks nearly black now. It is glistening in the cold and keeps glaring at me.

If Kirk could see this he would surely be scared again. He was scared of everything and the older he got the stranger he became.

We could have never imagined that it was possible for him to become more eccentric, but as it turns out it was.

He had always wanted his sandwiches slightly burned, but when he got older they had to be black. Though he could only live out that eccentric side when he was in the diner, because Lulu resembled Mrs. Gleason more and more.

In my opinion she had every right though, because she was married to Kirk and god knows that he needed a strong hand to guide him.

As bizarre as his life was, his death was more so.When he was a little bit older than sixty, he was running through the night, again haunted by assassins, and made it on top of a roof from which he jumped yelling "I am Dracula". What did assassins have to do with Dracula? That was Kirk!

His son did him credit though and Kirk and Mrs. Gleason were reincarnated in Lulu and Kirk junior. I am not exaggerating.

Josh was grounded more than once because he had beaten up Kirk junior or had threatened to do so.

Lulu always came running when that had happened, followed closely by Kirk and Kirk junior. If Lorelai hadn't disagreed I would have probably just patted Josh on the shoulder and said "Well done". I mean I beat up Kirk more than once when we were kids. 'Like father, like son,' I would say, but Lorelai didn't want to hear that, although she always burst out laughing as soon as we were alone and Josh was upstairs in his room.

It was a similar thing with Liz's daughter Doula who was thrown out of Layna's room several times, although she was older. Doula is a sweet girl, but she resembles her mother too much. She just starts talking without thinking and together with TJ's words of wisdom, it's a fatal combination

Yet she went to College and works as a psychologist today. In my opinion all psychologists need one themselves and my niece is no exception, which is not surprising when you consider her parents.

It's been ten years now since Liz and TJ died in another car crash. If you get as old as I am you learn to say goodbye, although it's not always possible to get over the loss. Zach and Lane had to learn that lesson early in their lives when their third kid died shortly after birth. The twins are doing great though and they are both working in the diner now, keeping the place up and running, while Lane and Zach are on another tour with their band.

Funerals are getting as common as going to the movies and I often ask myself how many more I have to endure until my own one will arrive.

That is how it must be if you live forever. It's a goal that more and more young people seem to have, but for me the thought alone is a nightmare.

To live forever.

What they are not aware of is that all the people you love are dying and you're still there, alone with all the memories of better and happier times.

I am glad that we all have to die.

I have seen so many people in this town go that weren't even family.

Miss Patty was the first one to die. They said her heart just stopped beating. Another rumor said it was her liver. I don't know about that, I am just sure of one thing: She is dead.

East side Tilly followed shortly after her and even Taylor didn't living that long after her death, although I would have sworn that he would still be there to harass my great-grandchildren. They said that Patty's death affected him deeply and that they had a better, let's say relationship, than it seemed at first. I don't really want to think about that.

Andrew died surprisingly young after an operation and Gypsy died from an electric shock when she tried to repair one of those new cars, without any idea what she was doing.

Kirk jumped off the roof and Babette and Morey died shortly after their last cat passed away. All three of them are buried in one grave; Taylor would have had a fit!

Involuntarily I have to laugh when I think about all these loons that I grew up with and spent my life with.

However the fact that the old loons are dead does not mean that there aren't new ones. Sometimes when I walk through town with my family I still feel like I am in an asylum and the guards have painted the ceiling so it looks like the sky.

Isn't there a movie where this guy lives in a huge studio and everyone around him is an actor while the whole world watches him live his life and he doesn't know anything about it?

It's Lorelai's doing that I know that movie.

Lorelai

Slowly I walk the last few meters to my destination and stop.

**TBC**

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	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**_I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone_**  
**_But though you're still with me I've been alone all along._**

The smile on my face disappears, my breath hitches and the excruciating pain spreads in my chest. I stare at the stone and I feel that my eyes well up with tears and reality catches up with me.

_Lorelai Victoria Danes_  
_14.04. 1969- 28.11. 2055_

That day in November three months ago was the darkest day of my life and not a single day has passed that I don't wish she had taken me with her.

We were both old. I had problems walking and her eyes were worse than mine. They were okay for watching TV, but she had problems reading and so we spent most days in summer out on the porch in our rocking-chairs talking.

I have to ask her what the book was called that we read right before… god, I am still talking like she's still here and I just have to walk back home and she will be there waiting for me.

She never stopped talking and now when the silence in the house gets too loud, I sometimes think I can still hear her babbling.

Against better knowledge I walk through the house looking for her and after I have looked everywhere I try to understand once more that she's not there any longer.

It was the day of the first snow and when Lorelai was still asleep when I woke up in the morning I knew that something was wrong.

For fifty years she had always woken me up for the first snow and had dragged me out into the cold as happy as a kid that her present had arrived.  
I complained, griped and grumbled but enjoyed it anyway, sharing the moment with her and looking at her while she was bouncing out of sheer joy. Her eyes would light up, her curls bounced with her and her smile seemed to light up the night around us, at least that's how it felt for me.

Yet, this day she slept and when she finally woke up we both knew that it wouldn't be much longer.

Like animals that lie down to die we humans also sense it when it's time for us to go and the look in her eyes showed me that she knew that she would die.

She got up, had a cup of coffee and went back to bed. The energy that usually pulsated around her like a shield was gone and an incredible desperation came over me.

I wanted to yell at her that she should fight because she wasn't sick.

I wanted to lie down beside her and die with her, but my time hadn't run out yet.

I called the kids and the panic in my voice must have let them know that I was telling the truth when I said that their mother was dying.

Rory had been in New York at the time which made it easier because she didn't have to travel for too long.

She asked for some time alone with her mother and I don't know what they talked about, but she wasn't as desperate as I thought she would be when she came out of the room. The other four said goodbye as well. April was also there. 

When I went into our bedroom and we were alone for the last time, she was nearly too weak to speak.

"I love you," was the only thing she said and she repeated it quietly like a mantra. I held her hand and tried to tell her what I was feeling, but I couldn't find the words. I stared at her, unable to speak and yet I am sure that she knew what I was thinking.

She pressed her hand to my mouth, her movements already agitated and she pulled me down to her and kissed me one last time.

"I'll warm up the cloud for you," she smiled shakily and the mischievous glow in her eyes came back one last time.

"Ok," I nodded and smiled back at her and that is how the kids found us when they came into the room.

Lorelai died with that smile on her face.

I can't remember her funeral, only that Toni supported me, because since she has gone walking seems to be so much harder.

I can still hear Sookie's and Michel's sobs but I don't know if I cried.

Everything is so much harder: Getting up in the morning, walking, talking, eating and falling asleep.

The kids look at me and worry and they visit me more now than they ever did before, but what Lorelai has taken with her they can't give me back.

_Beloved mother and wife_ says the inscription on the grey sparkling gravestone directly under her name. Slowly I crouch down and take the lighter out of my pocket and light the candle on her grave.

The words on the stone don't do her any justice, just like all of my words never could do her any justice.

_Death is the beginning of eternity,_ says the small inscription on the stone, under the free space where my name is going to be, like we had agreed.

I am sure that she is sitting on her cloud now waiting for me while I look back on our fulfilled life.

With difficulty I get up and take a last look at the grave that I visit every day before I turn around to start my way home, which seems endless.

I won't have to wait much longer, I can feel it.

I am not afraid. She will be there.

**The end**

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Thank you for reading this story and I hope you liked it!

My goal with this story was to write in the first person for once and make this a story from luke's point of view, which I never did before. That it got so dark is basically a coincidence, since I got the idea for the story when I was standing on a bus stop waiting for the bus. It was dark, it was cold and I was freezing. I looked around me and saw this old tree without any leaves. And the story was born. As soon as I got home I started writing.

I know inspiration hits me at strange moments!

Thanks to Steph and Grizzly who both betaed parts of this story and had some troubles with the strangely translated sentences sometimes. I wrote the story in german first, another thing I did for the first time.

See you at the Chat-a-thon!


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